An American In Paris (1951)

Gene Kelly and Lesley Caron

'An American in Paris' is an MGM musical film made in 1951, directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant.

It features music from the Gershwin brothers, including George Gershwin's magnificent orchestral composition of 1926, and lyrics from some of brother Ira's works of the 1920's and 1930's. It was a critical, financial and artistic tour de force and one of the most successful and celebrated of the 50 musicals which MGM produced.

The Gershwin musical pedigree combined with the choreography and dancing of Gene Kelly at his athletic and artistic peak, together with the 19 year old Lesley Caron makng her movie debut, make this a movie to savour.

The high point is the imaginative, avant-garde ballet, an 16 minute "dance daydream" in the style of various Impressionist painters, featuring Kelly and Caron, and set to Gershwin's An American in Paris. The ballet alone cost more than half a million dollars, a collossal sum for the austere post-war 1950's.

The movie was an original for the screen, conceived by MGM producer Alan Freed as a vehicle for Kelly and constructed around a group of George Gershwin's most popular songs ("I Got Rhythm", "I'll Build A Stairway to Paradise", "'S Wonderful"). Out of eight Academy nominations it won six Awards including Best Picture (over supposed favorites 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'A Place in the Sun) as well as a special citation for choreographer/star Gene Kelly and the Thalbrg Memorial award for Alan Freed. It is one of very few musicals to win the Best Picture Award.

In 1993, 'An American in Paris' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The uncomplicated plotline revolves around a simple, old-fashioned love story, set in Montmartre and sends up the penchant of young Americans to dabble in French culture. Penniless ex GI arist Jerry Mulligan, played by Gene Kelly, tap dances with urchins and falls for gamine muse Lise, played by Leslie Caron, and vies for her with a close friend of his called Henri Bourel, a popular nightclub performer played by suave French singer Georges Guetary, who had saved her during the war from the Nazis.

Meanwhile rich and jealous art patron Milo Robert, played by Nina Foch, seethes, all dryly observed by the composer pal played by pianist and Gershwin exponent Oscar Levant. Henri very conveniently fades from the action when he discovers that Lise has fallen in love with Jerry and thete is a happy ending.

The story is held together by the wonderful music, stupendous production numbers and Minnelli fills the film with vitality, Parisian joie-de-vivre, and a riot of Technicolor. The sensational, innovative highlight is Kelly's original dream sequence ballet to the title music, staged through sets in the style of artists, Dufy, Utrillo, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others, and the blissfully romantic Kelly-Caron "Our Love is Here To Stay" dance number on the banks of the river Seine.

'An American in Paris' is one of the greatest of all musicals, an unmissable movie masterpiece.